D'Annunzio E Il Vittoriale: Guida alla casa del poeta

Italy: Edizioni del Vittoriale, 1985 The book is written in Italian. b/w and colour plates. Some age and shelf wear. Edges of book cover rubbed and corners bumped. Spine edges rubbed. Clean text pages, no internal markings. A guide to the house of the poet written in Italian this is a sumptuously illustrated colour guide to the shrine built by Gabriele d’Annunzio to live in and to celebrate his own life and achievements as the famous poet, WWI war hero, and propagandist friend of the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the early decades of the 20th century. The Vittoriale is a villa-cum-mausoleum exquisitely designed in the Art Deco style, stuffed with books, manuscripts, paintings, frescoes, sculptures, pottery, objets d’art and relics of his personal and political life. The illustrations give an exceptionally vivid and detailed idea of the intense décor of this extraordinary building and of the narcissism of the man who built it. The villa is connected to an auditorium seating 1500 people, in which is suspended his WWI fighting biplane, rooms containing his favourite cars and his anti-submarine motor launch, and surrounding monumental gardens with spectacular views of Lake Garda.